Fizzlebert Stump (10 page)

They got out of the car and went to see what had happened.

The lorry blew several loud blasts on its deep parping horn as it rattled off into the distance.

The corner of the caravan that had been sticking furthest out into the middle of the road was missing. The lorry driver, who had presumably been surprised to find a caravan parked in the middle of the road, had managed to not hit it straight on, which would have made a dreadful mess, but had instead just clipped it.

There was glass in the street, and shattered
plywood, but fortunately the septic tank hadn't been ruptured so at least there was none of
that
spilling on to the tarmac.

From where Mr and Mrs Stump stood they could see into the inside of the caravan, without having to open the door.

‘Fizzlebert,' his mum called, ‘are you awake?'

She called quietly, because if he was still asleep she didn't want to wake him up for so small a problem.

Naturally Fizzlebert said nothing from inside the dark caravan, because he wasn't there.

‘That's going to cost money to mend,' Mr Stump said, looking at the space that had twenty seconds earlier been a caravan corner. ‘It's rather a nuisance.'

‘I think he must still be asleep,' Mrs Stump said, tiptoeing back to the car and pulling on Mr Stump's elbow. ‘Let's leave him be.'

They drove the rest of the way to the park, where everyone else was already long since parked up, without any further incident. (Except for the incidents in which they had to stop when something fell out of the caravan (a kettle, for example), and Mr Stump had to go and pick it up.

These incidents happened every hundred metres or so, and after the third time Mrs Stump said, ‘Why don't you just walk along behind the caravan, dear?' And so he did and by the time they reached the park he was carrying a kettle, an ironing board, a goldfish bowl, two books on Hungarian folk customs in the seventeenth century, one book on famous fish
from Swindon, a broken umbrella, a pickled stick insect, three glass eyes reputed to have belonged to Marie Antoinette, two left clogs, an empty box of instant mashed potato, three golf balls, a whisk of only sentimental value, a dumbbell, a lightbulb, a bottle of fresh Dutch wine, a stuffed stoat, a wig, a dried flower arrangement, six deflated balloons, a small chest of drawers, a goldfish, two plates (broken), one plate (unbroken), another wig, a triangular bandage, a selection of Christmas cards, a cassette tape of birdsong accidentally recorded over
The Shuffleup Sisters' Greatest Hits
, a pint of milk, a model elk, a silk glove (green), one shoebox labelled
photos (goats (funny(ish)))
and six sheets of toilet paper (unused).)

*   *   *

By the time they'd arrived and Mr Stump had unloaded himself of his load, it was very late and almost everyone at the circus was asleep. The stars were shining high overhead and the moon was hanging low on the horizon. It was a beautiful night. It was warm and welcoming.

‘Let's let the boy sleep, Gloria,' said Mr Stump, sitting down beside the car.

‘OK,' said Mrs Stump, opening the car door and pulling out the seats.

(The good thing about a clown car is that it comes apart easily. It's made that way. You just have to be careful not to knock the little switches and catches that hold it together when you're driving.)

‘Here,' she said, handing her husband the passenger seat.

They sat down together in the soft, comfy chairs, held hands and dozed off in the open air.

They were woken a few hours later when Fish, the circus's famous sea lion, decided to check underneath them for fish. He had often found that when people were sitting down it was because they were hiding something and sometimes it turned out that ‘something' was a synonym for ‘fish', which just means a word that means the same thing (that's what ‘synonym' means, not what ‘fish' means. I assumed you already knew what ‘fish' meant because you've read
Fizzlebert Stump The Boy Who Cried Fish
(and possibly even other books by other authors (I don't mind, really) that also have fish in
them, such as
The Bloomsbury Guide to Famous Fish of Swindon
)).

Mrs Stump fell off her chair and rolled across the grass.

‘Arrghhh!' she shouted, climbing out of her interrupted dream.

‘Oh, let me help,' said Doctor Surprise, leaning down and offering his hand. (He'd just been passing by on his usual morning stroll round the circus.)

‘Thank you, Doctor,' she said, climbing to her feet and brushing herself off.

Fish, having found no fish, flolloped off. The smell, though, was hesitant about following him and hung around for a while.

‘Enjoying a little al fresco snooze?' the Doctor asked, taking his moustache off and wiping it on his shirt.

‘Oh,' said Mrs Stump. ‘We got in later than usual and Fizz was already asleep. We didn't want to wake him.'

‘How perfectly nice you are.'

‘I'd best wake him now though,' she said, looking at her wristwatch. ‘It's a freckle past nine o'clock. He needs his breakfast.'

‘That reminds me,' Doctor Surprise said. ‘Flopples needs her pre-breakfast cuddle. Must go. Cheerio.'

He dropped a little pellet at his feet and a great
woosh
of coloured smoke swirled up and around him swallowing him up. (He was, as you know, the circus's illusionist (and mind reader (and rabbit tamer)) and he knew how to make a grand exit.)

A wind trickled between the caravans and
within seconds the smoke was blown away to reveal Dr Surprise polishing his moustache on his shirt again.

‘This thing keeps smudging,' he said, when he noticed Mrs Stump looking at him. ‘It's new.'

And with that he wandered off.

‘Morning,' Mrs Stump said to Mr Stump, who had just woken up.

‘Morning,' he said back, yawning and stretching.

‘Breakfast?' she asked.

‘I suppose,' he said. ‘What is it today?'

‘I was thinking maybe toast and—'

‘Post!' called Madame Plume de Matant, tottering towards them, waving a letter in her hands. ‘It came to my caravan by mistake, Monsieur Stomp.' (She said it in her best
French accent, which was only slightly better than her worst French accent.)

‘Thank you,' Mr Stump said, taking the letter. ‘It's from my pen pal, Giovanni.'

‘Ooh la la,' cooed Madame Plume de Matant. ‘An Italian gent? 'ow exotic.'

‘Yes, he's from Birmingham,' said Mr Stump, tearing the corner off.

‘I suppose,' Mrs Stump said, ‘we could have cornflakes and earthquakes, if you're getting bored of toast? I'll go get the bowls set out and you get ready to shake the caravan.'

Mr Stump was too busy opening his letter to nod, so Mrs Stump climbed up the fold-down steps and opened the caravan door anyway.

‘Fizzlebert,' she whispered as she crept in. ‘It's time to get up.'

Mrs Stump stood in the caravan's doorway and stared at the place Fizz slept.

The bed was folded down from the wall in the little dining area. The straps were unbuckled and dangling and the sheets were ruffled and messy. His pillow lay on the floor. But Fizz wasn't there.

‘Oh,' she said to herself as she stared at the untidy bed.

Fizz wasn't there.

‘That's odd,' she muttered.

Fizz was not there.

‘What's that, dear?' Mr Stump called from outside.

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘It's just he's got up already. He's left a dreadful mess though.'

Mr Stump peered into the caravan through the missing corner.

‘Oh yeah,' he said, seeing the unmade
fold-down bed. ‘That's not like him. Maybe he didn't want to wake us up. You know how that thing squeaks when you fold it back up. He's a good boy, Gloria.'

‘I didn't say he's not,' she said. ‘But where's he got to?'

‘Probably over in the Mess Tent having breakfast.'

‘Of course,' she said.

She got out two bowls, lined them up on the kitchen table and poured cornflakes for her and her husband.

‘OK,' she called. ‘You can shake the caravan now.'

She clutched the edge of the table with her knees, and held the bowls as still as she could while Mr Stump simulated the second-best earthquake he'd ever simulated.

It was only when Mr Stump bumped into Miss Tremble, the woman who trained the beautiful white horses with feathery headdresses, an hour later, that the first inkling that something might actually be wrong bobbed to the surface of his mind.

‘Mr Stump,' Miss Tremble said. ‘I was expecting to see Fizzlebert this morning. Has the timetable changed?'

Miss Tremble taught Fizz entomology and astrophysics (on alternate days: insects and bugs one day, stars and space the next (she wasn't silly)), and hers were classes that Fizz actually enjoyed (he didn't understand it all, but at the very least he liked the pictures).

Miss Tremble was young and funny, she had short dark hair and jodhpurs and a sweet face and the worst singing voice you've ever
heard (although the horses liked it), but fortunately entomology and astrophysics required hardly any singing at all. She wore a bright spangly bolero jacket and a little red beret and high black boots. She smelt faintly of hay.

Mr Stump liked her, even if she did get a bit weepy when one of her horses looked at someone else instead of her. She loved those horses and that wasn't a bad quality in a horse woman.

‘The timetable's up on the fridge,' Mr Stump said. ‘I don't think anything's changed.'

And thus (and eventually) the mystery began.

Mr Stump went and spoke to Mrs Stump. Mrs Stump and Mr Stump then went and spoke to everyone else they could find and
soon discovered that
no one
had seen Fizz.

‘Oh dear,' Mr Stump said.

Mrs Stump was more worried and said something that made Mr Stump blush and me not want to write it down.

Now, you might remember that way back in the first book I ever wrote about Fizz there was a scene similar to this one. Fizz had gone missing and the Stumps had asked around and Dr Surprise had remembered that he'd given Fizz directions to the library (and instructions to come straight back). This morning, however, Dr Surprise was of no help. He'd not told Fizz to go anywhere. But he did say, adjusting his monocle and using his best hypnotic mind reader sort of voice, ‘When did you last see your son?' and that was enough to nudge the memory of the night before to the top of Mrs Stump's mind.

‘The woods!' she said. ‘He got out to have a pee.' (No one was embarrassed by words like ‘pee' in the circus. Worse words than that could be heard when a rigger dropped a hammer on his foot or a horse forgot to tell Miss Tremble he loved her. (Sometimes, Cook even made an authentic ham and pee soup. On those days, generally, everyone chose the vegetarian option.))

‘But we heard him get back in,' Mr Stump said.

‘Or did we?' Mrs Stump said, ominously.

‘The door slammed.'

‘Many things can slam a door, Mr Stump,' said Dr Surprise. ‘Why, Wilfred's Patented Sound Effect Spell makes a very convincing door slam when you shut an ordinary-looking envelope. It's most impressive.'

‘Wind,' said Mrs Stump.

‘Sorry,' said a passing clown (Philip T. Gibbet), ‘it was those lentils.'

Within five minutes the Stumps were in the little clown car driving back up the road through the woods. (They'd unhitched the damaged caravan, so they were driving faster than the night before.)

They were, naturally, worried about their boy, left all alone in the woods all night.

‘I'm worried about our boy,' Mrs Stump said.

‘Naturally,' said Mr Stump, clutching his little moustache so hard with worry he left fingerprints in it. ‘He's been all alone in the woods, all night.'

They zoomed along the long straight road, up the hill, retracing the drive of the night
before (but in reverse (not that the car was in reverse of course, that would be silly and Mrs Stump didn't have her clown make-up on so silliness wasn't on the cards at all)).

‘Where did we stop?' Mr Stump wondered.

‘It all looks the same,' Mrs Stump moaned, looking at the tall trees that loomed over from both sides.

‘It could have been anywhere.'

It did all look the same, and since they'd stopped in the dark they hadn't been able to see any of the landmarks that would have helped them recognise the right place, had there actually been any landmarks for them to see, which there hadn't.

It seemed hopeless.

And then Mrs Stump said, ‘I think it was just here.'

‘Oh yes,' said Mr Stump, bouncing in his chair. ‘I think you're right.'

What had tipped them off, what had made Mr Stump so suddenly happy and Mrs Stump so sure, was the sight at the side of the road, not twenty metres in front of them, of Fizzlebert Stump sat at the side of the road, on a tree stump, his dressing gown wrapped round his knees, looking up at the sky and biting his fingernails.